Motor Obstructed

Has anyone seen this error on the DJI Go App? I searched and could not find many hits on this error. The only hit I found indicated it may be a bug in the latest firmware.

Background:
I was in Hawaii for a business trip and took the Inspire along. First thing I did was do an IMU and compass calibration. I flew a couple short flights throughout the week with no issues at all. On my first trip out on my last weekend, I wanted to see if I could get some shots of whales. I did one battery worth of flying close to shore seeing how the camera angle and distance above the water impacted what I could see.

I saw some activity and while it was out there a ways, I figured I could make it. I flew out to about 4000' at an altitude of 200'. No issues at all. I saw from my FPV view some activity so I started flying out a little further. At around 4200', I get an error message in the upper left corner of the Go app. Says "motor obstructed", then something about auto landing. Needless to say I about passed out. If I am 4 minutes into my flight, how can the motor be obstructed. I quickly assessed if I still had control of the aircraft, what my distance and altitude was and decided to try and fly back to shore.

Everything worked as it should. No issues on the return flight and once I got back to shore, I flew a few feet above my landing zone for several minutes without any issues. The error message stayed on the screen the entire flight though the auto landing message either cleared on its own or I could have cleared it thinking it may stop the auto land. I don't know remember if the landing gear lowered after the error or I lowered it once I got back to shore.

The video footage doesn't show any abnormal activity and it flew back with no issues.

I did notice that the flight logs I uploaded to HealthyDrones show 2 different flight logs for what in reality was one flight. Not sure if the error caused a different flight log to be generated. The .dat file appears to show the entire flight.

I have all the logs and video along with a screen shot of the motor obstructed error. I decided not to fly it anymore in Hawaii and brought it back home. I opened a case with DJI and they want me to send them the aircraft. Seems extreme and puts me out of service for my next trip in 3 weeks.

Anyone else seen this error? I am running DJI Go 2.4.3, 1.6.00.40 for the aircraft, and RC has 1.5.70.

This was my longest flight ever with the Inspire and having it say it was going to auto land in the water was almost more than I could handle. Luckily, I didn't panic and just flew it back.

Staff Member

Has anyone seen this error on the DJI Go App? I searched and could not find many hits on this error. The only hit I found indicated it may be a bug in the latest firmware.

Background:
I was in Hawaii for a business trip and took the Inspire along. First thing I did was do an IMU and compass calibration. I flew a couple short flights throughout the week with no issues at all. On my first trip out on my last weekend, I wanted to see if I could get some shots of whales. I did one battery worth of flying close to shore seeing how the camera angle and distance above the water impacted what I could see.

I saw some activity and while it was out there a ways, I figured I could make it. I flew out to about 4000' at an altitude of 200'. No issues at all. I saw from my FPV view some activity so I started flying out a little further. At around 4200', I get an error message in the upper left corner of the Go app. Says "motor obstructed", then something about auto landing. Needless to say I about passed out. If I am 4 minutes into my flight, how can the motor be obstructed. I quickly assessed if I still had control of the aircraft, what my distance and altitude was and decided to try and fly back to shore.

Everything worked as it should. No issues on the return flight and once I got back to shore, I flew a few feet above my landing zone for several minutes without any issues. The error message stayed on the screen the entire flight though the auto landing message either cleared on its own or I could have cleared it thinking it may stop the auto land. I don't know remember if the landing gear lowered after the error or I lowered it once I got back to shore.

The video footage doesn't show any abnormal activity and it flew back with no issues.

I did notice that the flight logs I uploaded to HealthyDrones show 2 different flight logs for what in reality was one flight. Not sure if the error caused a different flight log to be generated. The .dat file appears to show the entire flight.

I have all the logs and video along with a screen shot of the motor obstructed error. I decided not to fly it anymore in Hawaii and brought it back home. I opened a case with DJI and they want me to send them the aircraft. Seems extreme and puts me out of service for my next trip in 3 weeks.

Anyone else seen this error? I am running DJI Go 2.4.3, 1.6.00.40 for the aircraft, and RC has 1.5.70.

This was my longest flight ever with the Inspire and having it say it was going to auto land in the water was almost more than I could handle. Luckily, I didn't panic and just flew it back.

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It's not a bug. It was a feature written into recent FW that senses if there is an obstruction (like the Inspire is caught in a tree or similar) and limits the current draw flowing through the esc's to protect both the speed controller and the motor.
Strangely, around the same time DJI re-jigged the firmware so as to not throw up the data recorder full error mid flight which scared the crap out of a lot of people.
I think your clue is that you have two flight logs which implies to me that your data recorder reached its capacity during your flight then started writing a new file. This may have caused your obstruction message to appear.

I do not believe your aircraft was ever in danger of calling into Davy Jones Locker though.

For clarification, the flight log that was split is the log from the Go app FlightRecords directory (DJIFlightRecord_2016-01-16_[07-55-31].txt) Last night I downloaded the flight logs from the aircraft using the USB method and that flight log (FLY168.DAT) was complete. I think the aircraft log is the data recorder but I could be wrong.

I got the same message the other night...about 2 minutes after takeoff. I was about to do some test shots with the X5 at night. Right after takeoff, I let the Inspire 1 hover for a bit to make sure everything was ok...then started to ascend to 50 feet...the error message popped up during the ascent. Needless to say, I brought the quad back down to about 10 feet and did a quick visual inspection of the motors...then headed back up.

I'd check the temperature of the motors when you land. One of the motors may be drawing excessive current. Have you tried loading your flight log into healthydrones? Perhaps more can be mined from the logs. I would seriously worry if I had that message.

My flight logs have been uploaded to HealthyDrones and it didn't show anything that was helpful. For some reason it split the flight into two different logs. At least it did for the logs I pulled from the Go app. The log stored on the aircraft was a single log of the entire flight.

Has anyone else seen the auto landing message after the motor obstructed message?

Having it happen 200' above the ocean at a distance of 4200' was beyond scary.

I'd check the temperature of the motors when you land. One of the motors may be drawing excessive current. Have you tried loading your flight log into healthydrones? Perhaps more can be mined from the logs. I would seriously worry if I had that message.

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Did not show anything in Healtydrones. Is there more on the internal Log file?
If I download a CSV file from Healthy drones would that show more info?

My flight logs have been uploaded to HealthyDrones and it didn't show anything that was helpful. For some reason it split the flight into two different logs. At least it did for the logs I pulled from the Go app. The log stored on the aircraft was a single log of the entire flight.

Has anyone else seen the auto landing message after the motor obstructed message?

Having it happen 200' above the ocean at a distance of 4200' was beyond scary.

Just had a buddy lose his Inspire 1 pro. On his flight log (4th flight of the day I believe) it shows "Motor Obstructed" followed by the telemetry red chevron rotating mercilessly and then "gimbal reaching rotation limit" message. Latest FW 1.6.0.40

Sorry to hear about your buddies Pro. That makes me feel lucky that I was able to get mine back the 3/4 of a mile. Which log showed the motor obstructed? Other than my screen shot, I have not found the error shown in any log.

I had pulled the log files from the inspire but not sure exactly what to look for. While the Go flight logs were split in to 2 separate logs, the .dat log file was complete.

I ended up opening a case with DJI last week. The person I talked to didn't indicate if they have seen this before. I asked if they could review the logs to determine the issue. They said I needed to send it in. They should have my Inspire on Monday.

As more people say they have seen this issue, I am uncomfortable flying it until they have it resolved.

Staff Member

Sorry to hear about your buddies Pro. That makes me feel lucky that I was able to get mine back the 3/4 of a mile. Which log showed the motor obstructed? Other than my screen shot, I have not found the error shown in any log.

I had pulled the log files from the inspire but not sure exactly what to look for. While the Go flight logs were split in to 2 separate logs, the .dat log file was complete.

I ended up opening a case with DJI last week. The person I talked to didn't indicate if they have seen this before. I asked if they could review the logs to determine the issue. They said I needed to send it in. They should have my Inspire on Monday.

As more people say they have seen this issue, I am uncomfortable flying it until they have it resolved.

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I have no idea why they would ask you to send the aircraft in, they can easily examine the logs by you just sending them the files.
The more and more I hear about DJI support the more worrying it is they are employing people who not only know nothing about the product they are supporting but also seem to have no basic training about how to deal with simple tasks that would reduce the number of units being sent in for service.
Maybe they are using one of those God awful call centre companies now !!!!

I have no idea why they would ask you to send the aircraft in, they can easily examine the logs by you just sending them the files.
The more and more I hear about DJI support the more worrying it is they are employing people who not only know nothing about the product they are supporting but also seem to have no basic training about how to deal with simple tasks that would reduce the number of units being sent in for service.
Maybe they are using one of those God awful call centre companies now !!!!

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I asked three fairly simple questions to the so called UK DJI repair centre and they asked me to contact DJI support and gave me a link. That link went to China who in turn referred me to the DJI europe site! Quality. Would I trust a spotty kid to repair my kit… Na!

I have no idea why they would ask you to send the aircraft in, they can easily examine the logs by you just sending them the files.

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I asked them probably 3 times can't I just send you some log files ...... I have a trip coming up that I would like to be able to fly so I really didn't want to send it in. They should have it tomorrow so let's see what happens now.

Got notified that my aircraft has shipped after repair. Basically they upgraded the firmware and did a compass calibration. Not sure what to as I was already running the latest. I will see what it has when I get it back at the end of the week. This repair doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Guess I will see what happens the next few times I am able to fly.

Just had a buddy lose his Inspire 1 pro. On his flight log (4th flight of the day I believe) it shows "Motor Obstructed" followed by the telemetry red chevron rotating mercilessly and then "gimbal reaching rotation limit" message. Latest FW 1.6.0.40

This one didn't end well

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How did it not end well?

General note for all on healthy drones: its analysis is very very limited and some of what it does figure out is based on broad assumption, e.g wind speed. I would take it with a pinch of salt. You're much better off pulling the flyxxx.dat file and uploading it to one of the online parsers.

I uploaded my motor obstructed flyxxx.dat file and it was different than healthy drones log. The one parser I used showed the flight but none of the error messages. Is there a way to see the messages that show up in the Go app during a flight?

While I am not very comfortable with what they did during the repair my biggest concern is if this happens again while over water and I am not able to bring it back, what is DJI going to do about the issue then.

During my conversation last night they said if it happens again, they will escalate it. What if my aircraft is on the ocean floor?

The error you need to pull from the other file. If you can match the time the error showed up with the current and RPM data in the log, you should be able to see if a particular motor or ESC had any issues.